An emotional confrontation took place on Wednesday at the Memorial Day ceremony for terror victims at Har Herzl in Jerusalem, in which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had his speech interrupted by a terror victim who is also the brother of a terror victim.
Rahamim Cohen was wounded in a terror attack in 2000, when he was run over and stabbed 11 times by an Arab taxi driver. His brother is security guard Tzvika Cohen, who remains in a coma after being critically injured in an horrifically brutal Arab ax attack in Ma'ale Adumim to the east of Jerusalem in February.
Connecting the two tragedies, Rahamim Cohen shouted to Netanyahu before the latter could begin his speech, and prevented him from starting for a long minute.
Cohen said the same fanaticism of Arab terror "met my family for the second time two months ago when a terrorist smashed my brother's skull, after I was wounded 15 years ago and the wounds still haven't scabbed over to this very day."
"And now again we are behaving with forgiveness, and we don't know how to deal (with terrorism)," he continued, criticizing the government for not decisively wiping out Arab terror.
Visibly exhausted from the emotional toil, Cohen said "enough" and stopped addressing Netanyahu as his wife urged him to sit. Netanyahu then began his speech, even as Cohen shook with sobs as his wife tried to comfort him.
Video of the confrontation in Hebrew can be seen below.
Later during his speech, Netanyahu noted on Cohen's words and said, "I understand you, I am a member of the same family."
Cohen's criticism and talk of forgiveness likely refers to Netanyahu's recent decisions to return the bodies of terrorists, even after his conditions of returning the bodies were grossly breached.
Tzvika Cohen, 48, was attacked shortly after midnight on February 26 while on duty at a mall in Ma'ale Adumim by 21-year-old Saadi Ali Abu Hamad, who also worked at the mall.
Hamad took advantage of his position at the mall to catch Cohen by surprise and brutally hit him with an ax numerous times inflicting severe injuries, head injuries, and a finger amputation. The terrorist kept leaving the scene and returning, trying to beat the guard to death; he also took the guard's pepper spray and sprayed it into his mouth to suffocate him.
Hamad then fled the scene to his village, Azariyeh, where friends helped him change and dispose of his bloody clothes. He then made his way to a relative's home, where he confessed what he had done and the relative convinced him to turn himself in.
However, Palestinian Authority (PA) security officials in Bethlehem were reluctant to report the incident to the IDF over concerns they would damage the building during the arrest. Eventually, the relative convinced the terrorist to turn himself in between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and called the police hotline.